Eric Russell: Now Inhale

And so it went on with disks being moved from peg to peg hour after hour, day after day, while a steady parade of opponents arrived and departed. Around the two hundredth day Potbelly himself started to pull his chair apart with the apparent intention of building a camp fire in the middle of the floor. The guards led him out. A new referee appeared. He had an even bigger paunch and Taylor promptly named him Potbelly Two.

How Taylor himself stood the soul-deadening pace he never knew. But he kept going while the others cracked. He was playing for a big stake while they were not. All the same, there were times when he awoke from horrid dreams in which he was sinking through the black depths of an alien sea with a monster disk like a millstone around his neck. He lost count of the days and once in a while his hands developed the shakes. The strain was not made any easier by several nighttime uproars that took place during this time. He asked the warder about one of them.

“Yasko refused to go. They had to beat him into submission.”

“His game had ended?”

“Yes. The stupid fool matched a five of anchors with a five of stars. Immediately he realized what he’d done he tried to kill his opponent.” He wagged his head in sorrowful reproof. “Such behavior never does them any good. They go to the post rut and bruised. And if the guards are angry with them they ask the executioner to twist slowly.”

“Ugh!” Taylor didn’t like to think of it. “Surprises me that none have chosen my game. Everybody must know of it by now.”

“They are not permitted to,” said the warder. “There is now a law that only a recognized Gombarian game may be selected.”

He ambled away. Taylor lay full length on his bench and hoped for a silent, undisturbed night. What was the Earth-date? How long had he been here? How much longer would he remain? How soon would he lose control of himself and go nuts? What would they do with him if and when he became too crazy to play?

Often in the thought-period preceding sleep he concocted wild plans of escape. None of them were of any use whatever. Conceivably he could break out of this prison despite its grilles, armored doors, locks, bolts, bars and armed guards. It was a matter of waiting for a rare opportunity and seizing it with both hands. But suppose he got out, what then? Any place on the planet he would be as conspicuous as a kangaroo on the sidewalks of New York. If it were possible to look remotely like a Gombarian, he’d have a slight chance. It was not possible. He could do nothing save play for time.

This he continued to do. On and on and on without cease except for meals and sleep. By the three-hundredth day he had to admit to himself that he was feeling somewhat moth-eaten. By the four-hundredth he was under the delusion that he had been playing for at least five years and was doomed to play forever, come what may. The four-twentieth day was no different from the rest except in one respect of which he was completely unaware—it was the last.

At dawn of day four twenty-one no call came for him to play. Perforce he waited a couple of hours and still no summons. Maybe they’d decided to break him with a cat-and-mouse technique, calling him when he didn’t expect it and not calling him when he did. A sort of psychological water torture. When the warder passed along the corridor Taylor went to the bars and questioned him. The fellow knew nothing and was as puzzled as himself.

The midday meal arrived. Taylor had just finished it when the squad of guards arrived accompanied by an officer. They entered the cell and removed his irons. Ye gods, this was something! He stretched his limbs luxuriously, fired questions at the officer and his plug-uglies. They took no notice, behaved as if he had stolen the green eye of the little yellow god. Then they marched him out of the cell, along the corridors and past the games room.

Finally they passed through a large doorway and into an open yard. In the middle of this area stood six short steel posts each with a hole near its top and a coarse kneeling-mat at its base. Stolidly the squad tramped straight towards the posts. Taylor’s stomach turned over. The squad pounded on past the posts and toward a pair of gates. Taylor’s stomach turned thankfully back and settled itself.

Outside the gates they climbed aboard a troop-carrier which at once drove off. It took him around the outskirts of the city to a spaceport. They all piled out, marched past the control tower and onto the concrete. There they. halted.

Across the spaceport, about half a mile away, Taylor could see a Terran vessel sitting on its fins. It was far too small for a warship, too short and fat for a scoutship. After staring at it with incredulous delight he decided that it was a battleship’s lifeboat. He wanted to do a wild dance and yell silly things. He wanted to run like mad towards it but the guards stood close around and would not let him move.

They waited there for four long, tedious hours at the end of which another lifeboat screamed down from the sky and landed alongside its fellow. A bunch of figures came out of it, mostly Gombarians. The guards urged him forward.

He was dimly conscious of some sort of exchange ceremony at the halfway mark. A line of surly Gombarians passed him, going the opposite way. Many of them were ornamented with plenty of brass and had the angry faces of colonels come fresh from a general demotion. He recognized one civilian, Borkor, and wiggled his ears at him as he went by.

Then willing hands helped him through an air lock and he found himself sitting in the cabin of a ship going up. A young and eager lieutenant was talking to him but he heard only half of it.

“… Landed, snatched twenty and beat it into space. We cross-examined them by signs… bit surprised to learn you were still alive… released one with an offer to exchange prisoners. Nineteen Gombarian bums for one Terran is a fair swap, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Taylor, looking around and absorbing every mark upon the walls.

“We’ll have you aboard the Thunderer pretty soon… Macklin couldn’t make it with that trouble near Cygni… got here as soon as we could.” The lieutenant eyed him sympathetically. “You’ll be heading for home within a few hours. Hungry?”

“No, not at all. The one thing they didn’t do was starve me.”

“Like a drink?”

“Thanks, I don’t drink.”

Fidgeting around embarrassedly, the lieutenant asked, “Well, how about a nice, quiet game of draughts?”

Taylor ran a finger around the inside of his collar and said, “Sorry, I don’t know how to play and don’t want to learn. I am allergic to games.”

“You’ll change.”

“I’ll be hanged if I do,” said Taylor.